Tips and Features on the New GamecocksOnline.com

Our new website design has been up for about a week now and we hope you have had a chance to check it out and look around. The website has been made more user-friendly with easier navigation and a cleaner look. We wanted to make the most-visited information easy to find. Check out a few tips below about new features and where to find information.

New Features:

On The Air tabOne of the most common questions we get throughout the year is, "What channel is the game on?" Last fall during football season we posted a series of blogs to answer just that question each week. Now, with the new website layout, we added an "On The Air" tab. This tab includes a seven-day calendar that will update every Monday with upcoming events with TV, radio, live online video and/or audio and live stats information all in one place. This is the one-stop-shop for all things Gamecock that you can watch on TV or listen to on the radio that week. Below the calendar are links to information about the Gamecocks on TV and SEC Network links, our radio affiliates and info on the Gamecock IMG Sports Network, and which sports have live video/audio streams or live stats.

Schedule tabThe schedule tab on the front page starts with the current day's date and lists upcoming Gamecock events for the next seven days. There is also a link in the top right corner of the tab for the Master Schedule, which displays every Gamecock event in monthly calendar form.

Top Videos tabIn the new design we have a designated tab just for video. Videos will still often be in the Top Stories as well, but the latest videos will all be on the Top Videos tab. On individual sport pages, the Top Videos tab shows only videos for that sport. And you can still navigate to the full All-Access page with videos for all sports, including live events and press conferences.

Sports navigationIn the top left corner, under "Sports" there is a drop-down menu with links to pages for each sport here at Carolina. With the new design we've added several quick links here to save fans a step. You can still click the sport name to go to the sport's front page, but now you can also click on "Schedule", "Roster" or "News" right from the drop-down menu and go directly to that section.

"Sticky" header and footer:Don't you hate when you read a story on a website through to the end, only to realize to get back to anything else you want to see you have to scroll alllll the way back up? Our new "sticky" header and footer solve this problem. These sections stay in a fixed position so that even when you scroll down to see more of the page (like in the screen grab below), the top and bottom navigation links stay in place:

Things that have moved:

AuctionsIn our old design, our official auction listings were on the front page underneath the top stories. Now, we've moved them to the right hand column and they are in a Shop box combined with our official online store and photo store. You can still reach the Auction main page at this link.

AdsThere are fewer ads in the new design and they are less intrusive. Don't get us wrong, advertising is important for revenue and we want to reward our great sponsors and make sure Gamecock fans know who our partners are so they can support them, but the new design helps us do that without overwhelming the information on the site. Several of our sponsors have contests and their logos displayed on the front page along with several other helpful links to university, NCAA and SEC websites:

Spurs Up BlogHey, that's us! The list of recent blog posts is now a tab in the main box instead of a separate box off to the right. This tab is on the main page as well as each of the sport pages, making it easier to find since it's in the same spot throughout the website.

Let us know in the comments what you think about the new design or any questions about where something is now if you can't find it. You can also use the Feedback button in the right hand column of the front page.